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Pokémon Gaming CentralFor topics that aren't necessarily restricted to one game, Pokémon Gaming Central ranges from comparing and contrasting the differences in the gaming generations to discussing the gaming franchise as a whole.

This was an idea I thought of a few days ago and I'm trying
to get as many opinions on it as possible for the sake of knowing whether
or not Pokemon fans are interested in this type of game. Originally posted
on the Pokemon subreddit.

This is a Pokemon MMORPG that would have a 3D anime-like look to it,
so areas such as routes, towns, cities, mountain ranges, etc. would
be vast and descriptive like you see them in the anime.

A Pokemon game where you could do anything in the entire Pokemon world,
like be a trainer, a coordinator, a breeder, a gambler, etc. Instead of
everything about it being turn-based, though, it would be live and you could
control your Pokemon individually and move whenever and wherever you want. For instance, Wild
Pokemon could just be standing around in places and all you'd need to do is approach them,
send out your Pokemon, and fight them right then and there. And you could
do this alongside other players in every main region.

This game would include:
1. All 649+ Pokemon.
2. Character customization.
3. Pokemon customization.
4. All main regions.
5. Statistic system and leaderboard for best trainers and coordinators.
6. All Pokemon leagues and frontiers to compete in and badges/symbols rewarded.
7. Pokemon contests and cups and ribbons/trophies rewarded.
8. Player Battle Tournaments with exclusive prizes.
9. Events such as legendary events or specific character events.
10. The standard Pokedex and Pokegear/Xtransceiver.

Own preferences:

Legendary Pokemon are just that: legendary. They're incredibly rare
and only a handful of dedicated players could own them increasing the
rarity, decreasing legendary hoarders, and increasing the demand for trade.
And they should only be available during events. Same idea goes for
generally rare Pokemon.

A stern currency system where money comes in short supply for doing jobs
or winning battles, like you don't get thousands of Pokedollars for beating
a Gym Leader or something, would be nice. This would make extremely rare
items like Master Balls incredibly expensive and only really dedicated players
could buy one so not everyone can automatically catch any Pokemon they
want after they woop Brock.

Pokeballs can miss completely, so you'd have to be careful with when, where,
and how you throw it. And depending on where your Pokeball lands, it doesn't
automatically become unusable once it's been thrown and misses. I mean, if it
lands in the water or it falls off the edge of a cliff, it will be unusable, but not if
you just land it in the grass.

More than 4 moves (maybe 10 or so) you can use so
long as TMs are fairly priced and you can remove your moves
through the move deleter or whatever.

Can dive underwater, surf, fly, etc. without the need for HM's and you
could do so freely around the maps.

Players can level up as well. Every time you do something, not just your
Pokemon level up, but your user does as well. This would be useful for
leaderboard rankings and for other people to know who's experienced
and who's not. Also, levels are unlimited for both Pokemon and Users, so
your Pokemon can keep getting better so long as the experience
requirement keeps getting reasonably larger just as much as for your user.
And leveling up won't be that easy, so it would take regular playing to level
up and evolve.

You don't receive the general starter Pokemon as your first Pokemon. You're
given Pokeballs and you just have to catch a weak one, train it, and search
further areas for the general starter Pokemon and battle to catch those.

Interesting Suggestions:

Gym Leaders' and the Elite Four's Pokemon's levels scale depending on your
Pokemon's levels. Not necessarily a full scale, like you have a Level 90 Ampharos and
Roark has a Level 90 Cranidos, but more a fair scale so that when you train your
Pokemon with other users and take on the gyms, you're not blasting through it.

User tournaments monthly and an annual championship
tournament for the monthly winners.

Legendary events native to certain regions consist of Legendary Pokemon running around
the regions and have an unpredictable location, decreasing people who camp in their typical
locations just to snipe it (though I'm not quite sure how this would work for large, slow moving
Pokemon like Groudon or Regigigas).

Instead of HMs and TMs, users would buy manuals that describe certain
steps to take in order to teach your Pokemon a move. Also, there could
be move evoltuions, like the more you use Ember a lot and you eventually
learn Flamethrower or Flame Wheel because of it.

Marketing Ideas:

A typical marketing method would be that you buy each
region separately and once you buy another, it acts as
an expansion rather than a separate disc and you can travel
between each regions without having to swap discs.

Each region $10 to $30 each (depending on how much space is needed to make it).

Aside from that, however, another idea is to include all regions
in a single game and allow each user to choose which region they
want to start in. You could possibly travel outside of your
first region using fly or surf (which could take awhile) or you
could just obtain a ferry ticket. Either way, it wouldn't be fair
to make you have to beat all of the gyms or whatever to travel
between regions and to be honest, it doesn't seem realistic either
and, of course, people in the anime can leave whenever they want.

This could make the game somewhere from $60 to $80 depending on
how much space it could take to publish it.

I've personally been dreaming for a Pokemon game
like this and I'm sure others have as well, but I wanted to get some
criticism on the ideas I had for such a game and possibly to get
other people's cool suggestions just so I can dream about it better.

So leave any suggestions you might have and criticism. Also, discussion
would be great.

The Leveling system, when I think about it, also gives a way for players to just make estimates on how powerful a Pokemon is by looking at its level. I do like the specific stat training method, however. Sounds reasonable. Yet I was keeping some of the classic aspects of the game with the basic leveling system and experience requirements. And to be honest, I don't want to be oblivious to a Pokemon's power nor do I want to look at a large chart of its stats simply to get an idea. You gain a level and all your stats boost up by one or two points. Sounds irrational, but it's a tradition of the Pokemon games. Trainer skill just allows for leaderboards; to know which trainer is the best experience-wise and add healthy and unhealthy competition while encouraging fan-boys to follow them everywhere, haha.

As for manuals for moves...eh. Did they have manuals in the Pokemon anime? I don't even remember correctly...how did Pokemon learn new moves? "OOPS, I THOUGHT I USED A THUNDERBOLT, BUT OUT CAME A THUNDER" or some crap is how I remembered it.

I never really gave much thought as to how contests would work in a game. In the anime, they put moves together and stuff, but I'm pretty sure that would take too much time to work out and like you said, could be pretty graphics-heavy. But in the games, the Pokemon usually just threw out a dry move registered under some rankings like Tough or Cute and the judges ranked off of that, but that sounds pretty boring in 3-dimensions.

I also don't know how certain Pokemon will work with certain terrains. I guess you could take the anime route and just disallow land-type Pokemon in water or in the skies altogether, but that kind of sucks when you think about it, especially if you want to have a type advantage over a certain Pokemon. You could take the game route and transition into some random terrain to match the type of Pokemon you're fighting, but that still sounds sketchy. Like when you encounter a Flying type in the sky...do you transition on a cloud or something? When you encounter a Pokemon in the water, do you to suddenly find yourself standing on a hill in the middle of the ocean? Yeah, doesn't make much sense to me when I think about it either because both sound pretty bad.

Other than that, I like your input. You have great suggestions, but the things you questions I'm not sure about myself, haha.

@to the person who mentioned PokeMMO

I'm suggesting a live battling, anime-styled 3D version of a Pokemon MMORPG. One with all of the regions, also. I'm not sure if PokeMMO has anything beyond Kanto, but I've never actually played it so I could have absolutely no idea what I'm saying.

I see. But (regarding pokemon levels) I'd rather keep fighting trainers an excitement, than a mind game with numbers. If trainers would only seek weak opponents, then there's really no difference than just playing the main series. Now if they also have that chance of fighting strong ones, then they get to learn more.

tl;dr less about numbers, more about battling.. this is exactly what i would want to see on an MMORPG.

Well an accept and decline option between users would always be necessary. You get the player's request along with his Pokemon team where you could maybe view the summary of his Pokemon to learn their moves, their stats, etc., but instead of having to look through their stats to see, you could just check their Pokemon's levels. You have a level 10 Pidgey and the other player has a Level 61 Hydreigon, you'll obviously go LOLno without having to scan through the individual stats.

I guess the reason I like knowing at LEAST users' Pokemon stats despite the tradition is because the Pokemon world is generally technologically advanced and of course you would have an idea of what the trainer's Pokemon will be like. And in the games where you fight NPCs, you might not know their Pokemon specifically and the possible difficulty, but you have an idea depending on their trainer type and where you are in the game. If everyone in this game is just labelled "PKMN Trainer", don't sport their Pokemon in their appearance, and lastly can show no record of their Pokemon to their challenger, it will just be a massive confusion. You'll have no idea who you're fighting and you'll have no pattern of their difficulty, so...why would you fight at all? I think the Gym Badge thing is an unnecessary avoidance as well...it could work, but it would just be SO much more convenient to figure it out by getting a summary of their Pokemon and their levels. Player levels as well. It doesn't have to be the hyper-realistic, untechnologically advanced game...I'm sure in the real Pokemon world, people will at least have the decency to at least tell you that they're incredibly strong trainers or they're new trainers despite the fact that they don't have levels. Sadly, people in the real world aren't always nice people, especially the people who play MMOs.

Quote:

If you want to make people play an MMO, make sure they see something new -- not something meaningless and old. Most of the so-called tradition is still there anyway.. like the EVs, IV's, natures and whatnot. And "tradition" can be found in the main series alone. That won't be dead until the next 4 or 5 more gens imo. Let the main series keep tradition, make new games be new games based on the original.

I would love to see new aspects of the game. Maybe a method of borrowing wild Pokemon rather than capturing them which would be nice for getting around and possibly the TCG being a sport within the MMO. I'm not sure about this "oblivious to Trainer status" idea though. Just seems too inconvenient.

Quote:

Actually, in many instances did Ash personally teach his pokemon new moves. A few "personal teachings" to cite is when Ash taught his treecko how to properly do bullet seed and another is when how he trained his Starly/Staravia (can't remember) to do a perfect/stable Aerial Ace. Of course, pokemon can "watch TMs" from a DVD player.. but i think it'd be more realistic if there were handbooks/manuals that let the trainer personally tutor his pokemon and/or tell him what to do. Not all pokemon are as smart as Alakazam. They're also animals. They could also be stupid. So tutoring them is mostly necessary.

...and as far as i know, there were no CD players in the anime. So i don't think TMs -as they are- would be ideal on a journey where you carry a bike in your backpack

Of course, by nature, growth and "experience", pokemon eventually learn new moves like you've said - although i'm fairly sure they don't do it on accident, but by instinct. For the case of thunder and thunderbolt, i think there's a very clear difference (visually) when a pokemon uses it... and that's the cue to tell the trainer "I CAN DO THIS MOVE NOW!!".

An idea i just came up with just now, too... Can't believe i've missed it. As an MMO, instead of "Manuals" you could instead have skill trees for each pokemon. With enough skill points invested in ember, you could learn flamethrower and flamewheel. Then with enough skill points in flamethrower and flame wheel, you could learn fire blast and flare blitz, respectively. Classic MMO style, no?

But still... like i've mentioned, imagine the trainer as a move tutor. It's his responsibility to "train" his pokemon, and teach him some new things too. Logically speaking, if a trainer can't teach his pets to do tricks, what is he? A coach? He should just be called a Pokemon coach then, and his goal is to become the greatest pokemon coach ever.

Seems like a really good idea. Though...would a fire-type's Ember evolve into a more powerful move, or would you be able to keep the Ember and just learn a new move? I'd sometimes like to keep weaker moves in case I'm in a tight space with legendaries, only need to do a little more damage and don't want to waste a powerful move, or just for general strategic purposes.

And we still need to figure out how battling would work on significantly different terrains...WE MUST NOT REST UNTIL OUR FANTASIES ARE PERFECT.

Maybe some attacks could be combined (e.g Gust + Firespin = heatwave / mud slap + surf = muddy water / fire blast + water gun = scald / anything more reasonable than those). This could also contribute to contests in that case. Attacks like rock throw could leave rocks in the area, Surf filling an isolated field with water (thus allowing other non-footed water pokemon to come out) and so on...

That's an interesting idea...certain moves could be used at the same time to combine other moves, which could maybe be a way of teaching Pokemon certain moves. This wouldn't have to apply to all moves, of course, but...that's actually a really cool way of looking at it and can kind of fit in with Contests.

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On the terrain's note... water pokemon will have advantage over water of course (bonus 10% to all stats?), fire being able to prevent opponents from switching when they're on grass (burned grass creates...uh...a ring of fire? XD), and rock types being advantageous on a higher elevation (yeah, they probably should add elevation-based battles. Put an auto-lock feature so that players won't have a hard time targeting). Ice pokemon have no downside on ice, Bugs are stronger in forests, birds couldn't fly much in forests/caves... etc. Sound-type attacks could also be more effective inside isolated places, like caves and ghosts have an automatic 50% evasion (i don't recall them having evasion moves anyway... aside from maybe Double Team) when fighting against them in dark areas (psychic pokemon ignore that evasion bonus, i suppose).

That's a great idea as well: type advantages in specific terrains. Yet maybe for Pokemon that aren't necessarily of that specific type, but know a move of the type, can get the advantage as well. (ie. Linoone using Surf gets a 10% boost on it's attack). But let's get a good list here:

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